Dead Sea Scrolls
Sir:
Your extremely interesting and information April 15 article on the Dead Sea Scroll will do a lot to clear up most of the misconceptions concerning them in the public mind
JOAN SHERIFF Chicago
Sir:
Yours was the most lucidly written article I have yet read. However, the Maccabees are among the greatest of the Jewish heroes, and the suggestion that Jonathan and Simon may have been the villains of the story is not going to sit well with the Jews.
JOSHUA L. BAILY JR. La Jolla, Calif.
Sir:
I find most repugnant the unwarranted conclusions drawn from the Qumran scrolls and their relationship to the origin of the principles and practices of the Roman Catholic Church.
LEO F. COLLIGNON San Francisco
Sir:
The Dead Sea Scrolls belong to the realm of Hollywood make-believers and the nearly dead myth of the Kensington Stone.
A. R. NYKL
Evanston, Ill.
Sir:
Your article is enlightening, but it does not offer a reasonable solution to the question of where Jesus spent the years unaccounted for from twelve to 30. It would be a reasonable conclusion that he was at Qumran.
FRANCES G. A. MILLAR Alexander, Ark.
Scroll Fragments
Sir:
Congratulations on the article. I have also thoroughly enjoyed your symbolic cover composition and recognized the "scroll fragment," having identified and translated this document myself in 1948. I admire the skill of Artist Bohrod in being able to apply the Habakkuk commentary (whose photographic plates were published in 1950), hack out a portion of it, crumple it and tint it in simulating a scroll fragment.
WM. H. BROWN LEE Assistant Professor of Old Testament Duke University Divinity School Durham, N.C.
Sir:
Does the drawing in the sand on the left of the cover picture have any special meaning? It looks suspiciously like the sign of the fish used by early Christians as a means of identifying themselves to others of their belief during periods of persecution. Did Mr. Bohrod have such an idea in mind?
JANET CAMPBELL
Geneva, N.Y. P: Yes.--ED.
Spreading Christianity
Sir:
When I read in your April 22 issue of the Protestant invasion of Catholic Italy, I wondered why they were there at all. If they are really sincere about spreading Christianity (their form), why don't they descend on Sweden? Now there is a country that probably has the most lax moral standards of any country in the world and a country that is almost exclusively Protestant. But I have an idea that the Swedish people wouldn't take kindly to a swarm of missionaries.
LARRY WINDLE Maywood, Ill.
Picture of Progress
Sir:
Overeager Japanese manufacturers may quote their 1956 camera sales to the U.S. at "$7,000,000 [April 15]," but the Department of Commerce count is $3,122,038. The same source puts German sales at $8,987,315. Figures show that most of the cameras imported by the U.S. were Japanese--more than 750,000, at an average value of $4.15. Next in number were 250,000 German cameras, at an average value of ,$40.90 each. GEORG BRINCKMANN Executive Secretary German Camera Industry Export Association Cologne, West Germany P: TIME should have made clear that its figure included sales made through U.S. PXs in Japan and exports to Canada.--ED.
Harvard's Poll
Sir:
Concerning the poll on religious beliefs at Harvard [April 8]: of all the Harvard men I know, there has, alas, never been one with a lively faith in anything but himself.
CATHERINE TOLSTOY ARAPOFF Quincy, Mass.
The Pleasures of Boating
Sir:
I want to express our appreciation for your April 15 color spread on pleasure boats and for your selection of our product. Boating as a sport and as an industry is undergoing a dynamic growth.
JAMES R. MCQUEEN JR.
President Trojan Boat Co. Lancaster, Pa.
Sir:
It is saddening to learn that only 9% of U.S. boatmen are sailboat enthusiasts. Even more so to conclude that the remaining 91% fail to experience or comprehend the beauty and sense of satisfaction a sailor receives when he combines his skill with the forces of nature to make white sails glide.
WALTER W. RICHARDSON Jefferson, Ga.
The Mailed Fist
At last the Post Office is going to be run like a business. Now let's have the 5-c- first-class mail and relieve the taxpayer of the burden of the third-class mail and third-class operation.
TONY BURKE Palm Springs, Calif.
Sir:
How in the hell can we expect the Republicans to run the whole country when they can't even run the Post Office Department?
C. STEPHENSON Columbus, Ohio
Sir:
Let the people who clutter up mailboxes with subscription notices pay for the mail service they receive. This goes for insurance companies, mail-order houses, etc. (TIME sends me only one or two. I'm not mad at them.)
(MRS.) HALLIE M. GRIFFIN
Vandergrift, Pa.
Sir:
The noisy blasts against Postmaster General Summerfield may have turned the House Appropriations Subcommittee "purple," as you say [April 15], but until the hue of Congress becomes more purposeful than regal, the statistical peashooters will continue to confound the postal problems. Let Congress discover the basic causes of the ever-increasing postal deficit; updating the rules would be the first step necessary to reduce or eliminate the postage avoidance practices which shrink postal revenue.
FRANK C. PETRINE Miami
Sir:
Every piece of mail carried by the U.S. Post Office should pay its own way. Third-class mail privileges should be withdrawn, and second-class rates should be raised. First-class mail users should not subsidize the second-and third-class mail users. If the abolition of third-class privileges causes advertising concerns, printers and mailers some loss, it should be remembered that they are merely entrepreneurs who have made a wrong guess as to how much an informed public will tolerate.
THOMAS F. YATES Arlington, Texas
Essence of Egan
Sir:
Well, Aurora's Mayor Egan made TIME [April 15]. Now that we are universally exposed as a city of addlepated voters, his supporters must be happy. As a crusading newspaperman, he had a certain merit; as a mayoral representative of a city, he's a vulgarity and a disgrace. Still, thanks for the wonderfully witty essence of Egan.
M. RIESE Aurora, Ill.
Sir:
I'll bet Aurora's mayor was deluged with cuspidors. What hilarious reporting.
BERTHS BOIVIN Chicoutimi, Que.
Sir:
Your article on Mayor Egan was like a breath of spring air. In these days of conformity, mass propaganda and drugstore religion, a good black-and-white personality emerges out of this horrible morass of Technicolor fluff.
JOHN RYAN Toledo
Death of a Canadian
Sir:
The suicide of our Mr. Norman rouses even this easygoing Canadian to protest the system of investigating committees used so widely in the U.S. We do manage to punish our guilty and protect our innocent without waving our dirty linen in the eyes of the world, and it is disappointing to see the American people condoning this type of behavior.
M. K. WATSON
Halifax, N.S.
Sir:
So far, the underlying causes of Norman's suicide are tacitly ignored. His childhood surroundings, as well as later descriptions of a gentle-mannered introvert, strongly point toward a personality prone to severe depressions (with consequential irresponsibility toward oneself). Now comes the limelight, with Lester Pearson trampling blindly into a precarious affair with the fine touch of a walrus.
GEORGE SENNEWALD St. Thomas, Ont.
Sir:
What's all that furor over the suicide of Canadian Ambassador to Egypt, Herbert Norman? Where there's smoke there usually is fire--there was testimony that he was a Communist, and Herbert Norman does not blame anyone but himself. Why should others place all the blame on our Administration and Government?
ARTHUR WYNN Forest Hills, N.Y.
Keep Calm, Count Ten
Sir:
Your April 8 "Invention of the Devil" was a journalistic gem, but the invention is far less diabolical than the calculated fiendishness with which the correct solutions were omitted. I can get some solutions, but one little rascal seems to defy solution altogether ["Complete the following by filling in the blank spaces: OTTFFSS --"].
Operating on the possibility that OTTFFSS is seven-tenths of bookkeeper in code, I can assume that the ninth letter should be S, but can figure no more. Since bookkeeper is the only word in the English language that has ten letters, six of which are consecutive doubles, if it is code, that's what it stands for. Wait a minute! I think I've found a constant relationship! Set the two up for easy comparison, thus:
15 20 6 19 4 19 24
O TT FF SS -- -- --B OO KK EE P E R
2 15 11 5
20 51 11 50 61 50 81
so that B is immediately below its equivalent, O, etc. By each letter is its numerical place in the alphabet. As it is, there is no relationship, but if you reverse the digits of the lower numbers, you get not 2 (02), 15, 11 and 5, but 20, 51, 11 and 50. Now there is an apparent relationship, but there must be an easier way . . .
FRITZ DONOVAN Harvard College Cambridge, Mass.
P: Let Reader Donovan brace himself; the letters are the initials of the cardinal numbers from one to ten. For the blank spaces, try ENT.--ED.
This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.